


Dead Men Tell No Tales

by ElricLawliet



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3386324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElricLawliet/pseuds/ElricLawliet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Epsilon fails to account for hidden blades, and Felix does not lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Men Tell No Tales

Carolina does not succeed.

It was stupid of her, she thinks in her final moments. She should know to be more careful. She  _does_ know to be more careful, but everyone fucks themselves over sometime. She has no one but herself to blame; she should have made sure she was out of the patrol's path, should have made sure she was in a harder area to stumble upon, should have made sure she and Church kept their talking only in her head, should have made sure to be fucking  _quiet_. She should have done a lot of things. There was always something she should have done. With Tex, with York, with Epsilon. Even now when she was trying to right the wrongs she had helped commit, she had messed it all up.

She thinks of the Reds and Blues, she thinks of her last memories of her mother when she was very young.

She wishes she hadn't talked Church out of saying goodbye.

The patrol guard finds her with her back turned, talking to thin air about things such an apparently low-level recruit shouldn't know, and she's barely ready. In the end, when the fight is seemingly won and she turns again, she hears Epsilon's scream even before she feels the blade pierce the weak point at the edge of her chest plate and twist. The soldier really is dead then, her bullet meets its mark in his neck, but it doesn't matter. Epsilon is yelling as he and the memory of Delta try to run her healing unit fast enough to keep her alive, but her lung is pierced and she's bleeding too fast, and the last thing she hears is the ghostly fragment of what her father might have been whispering

"I should have accounted for hidden blades. I should have seen it coming and I should have stopped it; I'm sorry Carolina I'm so--"

But he didn't, he hadn't, and Carolina does not live long enough to hear him finish rambling.

 

\---

 

Tucker stares at the man he had almost started to call friend, face a blank mask of shock as he lifts his hands in the air. Their helmets are on the ground at their feet, removed on command as the line of gunmen aim at them from every perceivable side. Somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks that this is the first time he's ever seen Sarge without it, but the thought is there and gone before it even registers.

Felix laughs, tells them about him and Locus working together from the start, about the plan to wipe out the entire population of a planet just because they're there. He tells them about his mastery of puppeteering the rebellion, and Tucker can see the shit-eating grin he wears even with the mirrored visor hiding his face. He wonders how many times he's grinned like that when they talked, when he talked to Kimball, when he talked to the Rebel kids, and his sword hand twitches.

But his sword is on the ground at his feet, with his gun and his helmet, and he knows he'll never hold it again even if his brain is screaming at him that they'll find a way out of this, they always have before. They can't just die here. Not here, not now, not when it's not just their lives at stake but an entire goddamn planet's.

But that's far too poetic, too heroic; and when Locus cuts Felix's story off there are still twenty guns pointed at them all, and there is no one who stops them when he calls the command to fire. Tucker barely feels the blast hit himself, but he sees his friends fall, and wonders if this is what happened to Carolina and Church.

He wonders if AI can go to heaven (or hell), and his last thoughts are of his ex-leader.

 

\---

 

"Kimball, they accomplished their mission. They actually managed to rescue their friends! They were together when they died, and they were going to come back. I saw it myself."

Felix is barely able to keep his smile from his voice as he tells Kimball how the Reds and Blues died, twisting only parts of it. He wishes he could tell her in detail; he wishes her helmet was off so he could see her face twist in horror as he describes to her how their bodies were reduced to ash and nothing. He's sick of playing babysitter, of pretending to care about a bunch of glory-blind wannabe heroes who really think they have a chance to die for a purpose.

But he can wait. He will never get the chance to gloat in her face, but if there really is an afterlife he can only hope she will be able to see the death she wrought on these people, these children.

So he holds his tongue and spins a tale to set up the final battle, he gives a few smaller speeches to rally the troops. The four lieutenants, it's almost touching how their battle cries ring. When he riles them up he has them all, because if it's  _for the Captains_ they can do anything.

When he later comes to the scene of the last battle, when the last shots have rung out and his snipers have picked off the last of the stragglers, he finds Doyle and Kimball in a pool of their mixed blood.

He grins, and he laughs.


End file.
